Episode 92: A Burden to Pray

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Good morning, Eddie. Good morning, brother.

How are you doing? Man, I'm doing good. I know, I kind of—that was kind of fake, because we already asked you how you're doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just a way to get us into the podcast, huh? That's right.

A beautiful October morning here in Arkansas. I think this will come out in October. This is being recorded the day after the debate, so today is

October 2nd. My little girl is fixing to be a year old tomorrow. Oh, wow.

Yeah, I can't believe that. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your co -host,

Allen Nelson, one of the pastors here at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

With me is Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of First Baptist Church of Marshall. How are you guys doing up there?

Man, we're doing good. Doing good. Yeah, amen. Well, we're fixing to—I think after this podcast comes out, we'll already have it, so we're fixing to have a baptism on October 13th, so looking forward to that.

It's always exciting to do. And we're doing some evangelism this weekend at the

Goat Fest. I believe we've talked about that on the podcast. We might have another episode on that after it goes down, see how everything went.

So just grateful for the Lord's mercies. Yeah, I'm excited too. This weekend, our brother

Wade Lentz at Beryl Baptist, they're having a conference on the sovereignty of God.

And some of our audience may know the speaker at the conference. His name is Keith Foskey. He makes funny videos and puts out some really good, informative podcasts.

And so if anybody doesn't know about Keith Foskey, you can go to your Calvinist or Conversations with a

Calvinist or whatever it's called now. I can't remember. Yeah. But it's going to be there.

I'm going to try to go a couple of nights. This time of year is on Thursday and Friday.

It's like I've got a junior high football player and a senior high football player. So Thursday and Friday.

And then, of course, Saturday we're doing evangelism. Right. Well, you and I participated in something on Monday night, and I thought we could have a kind of a lead in.

You know, actually, let's do this. Let's start first. Let's talk about last night. And no one is going to care about this now because you barely care about it when it happens.

Maybe the next day you care about a little bit, but then everybody forgets. And that is the vice presidential debate.

So by the time this comes out, no one will care about it. But just don't turn us off.

Hold on for just a second. I've got a point I'd like to make. But you said you watched some of the debate.

I watched just a couple of parts of it. I caught it. I mean, I did watch it live, the parts that I watched.

So they weren't like things that people had clipped out later. You know, I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed just in the entire

Republican platform around the issue of life and abortion, this idea that it's okay.

It's okay. Abortion is okay as long as they decided to do it in a state instead of federally.

It's not okay. I mean, I understand the idea of it's better that it's not

Roe v. Wade being in place. At least the states that want to be more conservative and life -affirming can be right now.

But I do not like the position that the Republican Party has taken

Donald Trump, J .D. Vance. However, the main thing that I've noticed, and I've noticed other people saying about the debate, was just that it was civil, that it was actually a debate between two people where they were actually getting ideas back and forth and were even able to affirm some things that each other said and find maybe a few kind of points of agreement.

And I think we've seen over the last several years, it seems like we've seen just a constant downgrade of what the debates have been.

And so it was nice to see that at least they could pull it off without it becoming just a complete circus.

So I watched the whole thing. Far and away, J .D.

Vance is superior. Well articulated. Right on so many policies.

Helpful with a lot of things. But I saw some guys saying like, you know, the future of the

GOP is looking bright and all that. And honestly, it was heartbreaking because the area that he is the weakest in is abortion.

To not be able to say, hey, look, life begins at conception.

Abortion is murder. We will not stand for child sacrifice in this country.

If we are going to support child sacrifice in certain states, we are barbarians.

It's not difficult to say those things. It shouldn't be difficult.

But a lot of people argue, well, it's in the name of political expediency. So we're stepping on the bodies of of aborted children in order to gain the

White House. Brother, I just that's that's a problem. And we should pray if you're if you're serious about this country's continuance, we should pray for repentance from the

Republican Party for this stance. And we should pray for repentance in our own hearts.

Because remember, politics is downstream from culture. There's a reason that they've taken this stance.

They've taken this stance because we have lost the battle on abortion that everyone that there's there's not at least from the top level.

There's not an anti abortion. Abortion is murder. Life begins at conception party in our nation.

That's not that's just two years ago. A brother from Canada moved here. You know, Alex and one of the things that he said, you know, was in Canada.

You don't have a pro -life party. And I thought two years ago, I was like, boy, that'd be real sad. And here we are.

Here we are two years later. And it's like, whoa, wait a second. We really don't have that. You can say whatever you want about political expediency or hey,

J .D. Vance is better. I do agree with you. J .D. Pence is better. Obviously to vote for the

Democratic Party is it's just not an option. But it should break our hearts that this is the position that we're that that the so -called conservative party is taking.

Right. And Donald Trump even I mean, I've heard him in three or four different different instances where Donald Trump has said you've got to get elected.

You got to get elected when he's asked about these things. His retort is you got to get elected.

And I understand the argument from a political point of view, but you still have to take stands on issues that you believe in or that's what should be happening.

Imagine if he said, hey, look, we're just going to we're going to go we're going to let states decide on slavery.

No, that's that's OK. Or we're going to allow states to decide on the

Second Amendment. Oh, man. Conservatives would like, no, like, right. It's like, no, you that you ban the you ban the murder of pre -born children.

You ban it. You say it's barbaric. It's wicked. A nation, a society cannot last long.

That sacrifices its children. That's right. So one of my responses was and this will get us to what we what happened

Monday night. But one of my responses to the debate debate is like, why? Why don't have burden for prayer?

The other day I was talking to our friend Jeff Johnson at the seminary at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, and we were just kind of talking and I was like, you know, brother, what where's the line that we're going to cross in American history where you say, you know what?

We're desperate for God. For me, that's that's we've already we should have already realized we've crossed that line.

We've passed that exit long time ago. Yeah. But there is no and the way you phrased it as we were texting this morning, the way you phrase it was a burden.

There is no burden for prayer in our churches.

So let's talk about that a little bit. So you want to flesh that out a little bit. Go ahead. Sorry. We might point out the difference between a burden and recognizing the need.

Yeah, because I think everybody recognizes the need. You know, whenever you go into almost any church these days, you know, you're going to hear people say, oh, we don't really have prayer meetings anymore.

But then when you try to have one, nobody comes, you know, and people say, yeah, we don't we don't get together and pray anymore.

But when you do get people together, we end up talking to each other more than we're talking to the

Lord. And and so I think you can get people to assent to the need and recognize the need and say we need to pray more.

But when we talk about having a burden to pray, I think then we're getting into, no, we we are what you mentioned, desperate for it, desperate for God to do something.

And we've come to the position where we've realized the only thing we can do is go to God in prayer.

We must go pleading with God in prayer, not not simply asking, but pleading.

I really do think it takes us being moved beyond what is merely intellect.

So when we talk about a burden, we don't just mean recognizing that intellectually we know we need to pray or even believing that we need to pray, but it's being moved to the point of feeling that we need to pray.

Yeah, I think that's good. You know, so we've had discussions on this podcast for I think we've talked about praying for revival.

I think we've talked about revival. And but this is just another one of those episodes to explore this subject.

And one thing I'm encouraged because I feel like there are a few brothers at least that I know that have a burden to pray.

And you're one of those mentioned a minute ago. Alex is one of those in our church.

And so one of our friends, Randall Chronister, I saw Randall a few weeks ago at a

I guess about a month ago at a football game and his son and my son were playing.

And so we just got to talking and we both just said, man, we just have a burden to pray. And it seems so simple to say it this way.

But basically, we're just like, OK, let's get together and pray then, you know.

And so I was like, OK. And basically, it was like, you get us a place,

I'll send out a message. So, you know, I messaged, I don't know, I think it was like 18 guys or something or I don't know.

It might have been more than that. I messaged a lot of guys posted on Facebook, all that, like, hey, we're going to have this prayer meeting.

Well, out of all the guys I messaged and everything, seven, we had seven of us showed up.

But I tell you what, brother, it was an encouraging time. You want to talk you want to talk about that?

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think sometimes we we go into these these things and we think, well, how do we how do we do this?

You know what? Do we need some kind of plan? And even, you know, we don't have to get into exactly what what we did the other night.

Other than to say we didn't really come at it with any agenda. You know, we kind of stood there for a minute.

So does anybody have a, you know, what what do you want to do? And then finally, we we just got down to praying.

And and then the Lord, it really, I think, worked among us as as we prayed.

And, you know, I even I even confess this at the beginning of our time that that just my need for a greater burden to pray, you know, and I would say to folks that are listening, if you're if you're there and you're like, man,

I hear what you're saying about it's more than just knowing that we need to pray. But I don't feel it.

I just don't feel it. I would say, well, go to God and pray about that. Let that be the start of you seeking to have a before you can pray with a burden.

Maybe you have to pray for a burden to really have that heart. Lord, Lord, give me a heart that that feels the need of our day, that sees the the lack in our society, that sees the weakness of the church today and the need for a gospel proclamation.

You know, we want to preach the gospel, but it starts with let's go to the Lord and and plead for souls and plead for God to to bring about the work of the gospel when we go out and we preach and we share and we and we proclaim it.

That's right. You know, it's in the book of James that I want to say as well.

James 417. Anyone then who knows the right thing to do yet fails to do it is guilty of sin.

So you don't have the burden to pray, perhaps, but you know you should pray. So don't fail to pray, pray.

And I just want encouragement like we can have and maybe this will will kind of talk about this more because we've talked about prayer meetings in the church and we should.

There are things we should do in the church. For example, in a couple of weeks, actually, when this episode comes out,

I think this will have already happened, but in a few weeks on a Sunday night. So we have services

Sunday morning, Sunday night and our Sunday night service. We are giving up and we're going to have a prayer meeting.

But we've done prayer meetings before or, you know, on like a Wednesday, like a full I'm talking about when we do when we have a prayer meeting, we do like we like we we have intentional times of prayer on in our service, obviously.

But on Sunday night, we pray for prayer requests and those things. We have a men's prayer meeting on Sunday mornings at eight forty five.

But when we have churchwide prayer meetings, we actually pray, you know, and we and.

Wow, that's revolutionary. I know. And so an hour actually, believe it or not, it's kind of hard to pray in an hour.

And so in the kind of prayer meetings we do. And so we're going to set aside two hours, 530 to 730 on a

Sunday night. I'm just offering this as not not as like, look at us. I'm just offering as maybe this is the idea some people can try.

But we're going to go from 530 to 730 again. I'm not trying to burden people if they can only make it for 30 minutes.

Well, come on, you know, and then they can they can leave whatever. But we really want to pray. We really want to cry out to God.

But let me just go back to this situation of our prayer meeting. And I would just encourage, like, it's not difficult for you to text a few pastors in your area or to call a few, you know, and and and to and to meet and to pray.

And I thought about there's so many reasons. There's so many excuses why we can't do things like that.

I get it. We're busy. We've got this going on. We've got that. I told you Thursday night,

Friday night. So I'm busy with the ballgames or whatever. But that's what we're talking about is the difference between, oh,

I know we need to pray and I have a burden to pray. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

That's right. That's right. You know, and I think also we can point out the it's not it's not one of these things where we can say, look, you prayed and therefore, you know, 10 more people got saved and baptized in your church this year, like like we can draw this one one to one correlation.

But I think we can praise the Lord also for when we have seen him listen and hear the voice of his people in prayer.

I'm thinking back to something that's been going on where we're at in Searcy County.

You know, I was thinking just the other day, there are several churches around here that are doing well.

I mean, the Lord seems to have turned his face toward these churches.

And they're not all churches that we would theologically agree with on everything.

But the gospel is truly being preached. And and I can think of four or five churches right around here.

And I hopefully would include our church among them that the

Lord seems to be blessing. And I look back to about five years ago, we started having it.

Maybe it was more like six years ago. We started having a prayer meeting of pastors and we met for about three years.

We met every week and prayed and we haven't been meeting basically since COVID.

We never got back to that group, never got back to praying. But I look at a lot of what's happening in our area today.

And I think I really believe that I see the fruit now of a lot of the things that we were praying for back then.

And it's across churches. Some of the churches didn't have anything to do with the prayer meeting. But we were praying for this area and we were praying for what the

Lord would do. And so I think we need to recognize we don't know how the

Lord might use our prayers if we will just pray. If we have a high view of the sovereignty of God, we should have a high view of prayer.

That's right. Because some people would say, if God is sovereign, why pray?

It's all worked out. You know, it's like, no, if God is not sovereign, why would you pray?

He can't do anything. He can't violate, you know, quote, unquote, free will. No, because God is sovereign, we pray.

Because we believe that God has ordained the ends and the means. And before the foundation of the world,

God has decreed to use the prayers. Why, Eddie? I can't explain it all. But he has decreed before the foundation of the world to use the feeble, weak prayers of his people to accomplish his purposes.

Jesus says things you have not, or James says you have not because you ask not.

Jesus says things like ask, seek, not. Like over and over and over again, we're called, we're encouraged, we're given example, and we're commanded to pray.

So it's like some things in the Bible you're given examples of and you're like, okay, I should do that. Or maybe some things in the

Bible, maybe you could think of you're commanded but you don't really see an example. Or I'll give you an example.

Hey, let me give you one. Like family worship. You know, we believe from the totality of scripture that we should be doing family worship.

There's not like an order of service, you know, for how you do family worship.

But we should be doing family worship. But prayer is one of those things that like we see examples of it.

We see encouragements to do it. And we see commands like there.

So like, why are we not praying? And, and again, this goes back to,

I think what we'll title this episode. And that is there's no burden. It's one thing to know we should pray.

And it's one thing, but it's another to have a burden to pray. You guys, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, uh,

I'm not trying to toot your guys horn or whatever, but you guys drove, how far did you guys drive? Um, well, we drove from, you know,

Shirley Fairfield Bay to, to Atkins. So I don't know how far that is. What? An hour. Probably like an hour, more than an hour, a little more than an hour.

Cause there was a wreck. We had to drive around the lake. So we kind of had a centrally located place,

I guess, in some senses, but it was by, for you guys, it was the furthest. We, we drove about, you know, 35, 40 minutes.

Uh, and, and, and I'm just saying like on a Monday night, I don't know, brother. I mean, y 'all could have had so many reasons why you didn't come.

You guys could have just prayed up there. I know y 'all talked about that and there wouldn't have been anything wrong with that, but there, but there is a difference in saying,

Hey, you know what? We're going to get together with these brothers and we're going to cry out to God.

And again, there's, there's a multitude of reasons for praying.

As you look at the state of our country, as you look at what I'm calling the compromise of the

Republican party, as you look at the state of churches, you look at like, and here's the thing, like the

Lord Jesus can free people from all these things. You know, this, this stupidity of,

I don't know if I'm a man or a woman or the, the, you know, the wickedness of abortion or, you know, sexual morality or greed or materialism or drunkenness, like, or drugs, just all these things that plague our nation, the sin that has entangled us like a, like a, like a thorn, you know, it's going through a

Nahum. What, who, who can help us? Who can free us?

The Lord Jesus can. That's right. But we don't have a burden. We don't have a burden to ask him.

Well, and, and here's the thing, you know, you mentioned that you guys are going through Nahum and you know, the, the distinction, one of the distinctions between Nineveh in the days of Jonah and Nineveh in the days of Nahum, so there's about a hundred years between them, those two,

I think, is that, well, in the days of Jonah, when he came, when he came preaching destruction, they repented and they prayed and they, they turned to God to, for, for rescue.

And we don't want to find ourselves in the days of Nahum. We don't want to be there. Well, if we don't want to be there, we need to turn to the

Lord. We need to have a burden for prayer. We need to, we need to get back to seeking him.

You know, it says, I would just like to give our listeners, if, if you're, man, if you're in a dry place, maybe spiritually, you're just like,

I hear you brothers, but it, the burden I feel is the burden that I don't even think

I can pray. I don't even know what to do. I would encourage you, use the word of God to give you words to pray.

And I'm even going to suggest a Psalm. I'm going to suggest you go to Psalm 80 and use the testimony of Asaph as a, as a catalyst to your prayer, to get you started.

And I just want to read three verses from Psalm 80, the first three verses. And it says this, give ear,

O shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to save us, restore us,

O God, let your face shine that we may be saved. Brothers and sisters, that, that can ignite your heart to prayer.

And so I would encourage you go, go read the whole Psalm, Psalm 80 and let

God through his word, give you the words to pray, to come seeking him, calling out to God that he would give you his ear and hear what you're asking for.

Yeah, there's an old Spurgeon quote, right? He says, what's more important, reading the Bible or praying,

I think. And basically he says, what's more important, breathing in or breathing out? You know?

Right. That's right. And so historically, we understand that the word of God and prayer go together.

That's right. I mentioned to you before we started the podcast, something else

I wanted to mention in this podcast. And I mentioned this to my church, but I didn't mention who the guys were, but I will on here.

The other day I seen a little clip of an interview between Tucker Carlson and Russell Brand.

Now I am not, I am not, I want everybody to hear me clearly. I am not endorsing

Tucker Carlson or Russell Brand. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what's going on with those guys as far as whether or not they are believers.

They're professing to be believers. And we pray and I pray that that's genuine and that God's doing amazing things.

But I don't know, except for the fact that in this clip, both

Tucker Carlson and Russell Brand were talking about they recently began reading the Bible and they're reading it for the first time.

And both of them were excited about the things that they were reading in the

Bible. And they were talking about different things with joy.

And they were actually talking about things that often are controversial in Christianity.

They were talking about the sovereignty of God and these things. And they were talking about it with excitement and joy because they were coming to the

Bible for the first time. And it really did convict me because how often do those of us that have been

Christians for a while, many years, maybe many decades, we get to the place where we're not reading the

Bible that way. And, you know, when we stop reading the Bible with fresh eyes, when we stop hearing

God speak through His word with fresh ears, maybe that dullness also affects the way that we speak to God in prayer, the way that we come seeking

Him. Maybe a part of the dullness that we have in our prayer is a dullness in the way that we are listening to what

God is saying in His word. That's right. That's good, brother. That's a good exhortation.

How cold is our Bible reading sometimes? How cold reading through the wonderful things that God does?

You know, I just finished in my own Bible reading the book of Esther. I'm doing a chronological plan. So I've just finished the book of Esther.

And you think about all the wonderful things. It's a book that doesn't mention the

Lord by name at all, but it's so clear that His hand is there, you know, what you thought this was going to happen, and then it switches, you know.

We don't marvel at these things, you know. And one thing I had written is in Esther, there's a time for fasting and a time for feasting.

The beginning of the book, they fast and seek the Lord. And at the end of the book, they're feasting and celebrating what

God has done. And it's just all I'm trying to say is we should come to the

Scriptures with awe. God has spoken to us. We should come with expectation that God is speaking to us.

Like here's the thing about cessationists. Like do you believe God speaks today? Yes.

He speaks by, in, and through the Scriptures. And so we should come expecting

God to meet with us. And so anyway, Bible reading and prayer go hand in hand.

Bible reading often is like the wood that can keep the fire going in prayer.

So anyway, I think that these two things go together and that we should come to the

Scriptures with a fresh hunger, a fresh eyes. And again, if you're hearing this and you're like, well,

I just don't have that, why don't you start with just asking the Lord for that? Right. Lord, give me a hunger for your word.

Give me a burden for prayer. Even today, you listen to the,

I don't know what day you listen to this. These come out on Wednesdays. Even today, text some people in your church or text some people, some pastor friends that you know.

And just here's the deal. There's got to be somebody that takes the initiative. There's got to be somebody that says, hey, let's pray.

So why don't you do that? If you're a pastor, certainly you have a little more opportunity.

You can say, hey, on this Wednesday night, we're canceling everything. We're just praying. And by pray, what

I mean is you don't need musicians. You know, I've been to those prayer meetings where you feel like, oh, that guy has to play like doo -doo -doo -doo while you're praying.

You know, it's like, stop, get that out of here. We don't have to pray. I mean, we don't have to play music.

You can sing. That's fine. But we don't have to do any of that. We're not even going to have a message. We're just going to gather on this night, and we're going to cry out to God.

Organize one of those. Or if you're not a pastor, maybe you're a lady listening to this.

Text or call or message some of your lady friends and say, hey, some of your sisters in Christ, say, ladies,

I have a burden to pray. Let's get together and let's pray. Why couldn't you do that over lunch, over breakfast, in an evening?

You know, I mean, you just have to have the burden. You just have to have the initiative. Guess what? I have a burden to pray.

Let's pray. And if no one else will pray with you, well, then get alone and pray. That's right.

That's right. So I hope this has been a helpful exhortation.

I don't feel like we're berating anybody. I'll be the first person to tell you, I need to grow in this.

Right. Me too. Me too. So hopefully it's more of an encouragement that we would do this together and that the

Lord would do great things for His glory through the prayers of His people.

What do you think, Ed? I think that's right. I think we need to be pleading with God to pray or to listen and to hear our prayer.

And, you know, as it says here again in Psalm 80, Restore us,

O Yahweh, God of the hosts. Let your face shine that we may be saved.

We need to be pleading with God to restore us. We're in a day when we do need that restoration, when we do need that reformation to come about, and we need to be seeking the

Lord to do that work among us as His people. Amen. Amen. Well, I hope that this has been a helpful episode, encouragement.

Maybe it'll move some people who are already thinking about this. It'll cross some over the line, as it were, and move them to put some feet on their desire to pray.

I hope that it's something that the Lord will use. Yeah, I believe

He will. All right, man. We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing, this is His work, if we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poimos, the masterpiece of God.